A retired Church of England bishop and a priest have been arrested by police investigating allegations of child abuse that may have taken place more than three decades ago in the Diocese of Chichester.

The allegations date back some three decades (Picture: Getty/ Peter Macdiarmid)

Sources told the AP news agency that the retired bishop, Peter Ball, 80, was being held at his home near Langport, Somerset, on suspicion of sex offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in the late 1980s and 1990s.

The second man, an unnamed 67-year-old retired priest, was also detained at his home near Haywards Heath, West Sussex, on suspicion of separate sex offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983, according to Sussex police.

Both arrests follow a six-month inquiry by Sussex police, provoked by two Church of England reports into the safeguarding of young people in the Diocese of Chichester during the 1980s and early 1990s., which were handed over to detectives in May.

Officers described the inquiry as ‘very complex’ and said that many of the people they spoke to, now adults, had to be traced as did witnesses and records.

Police stressed that there was no evidence of recent or current offending, or that young people were at risk.

They also said that despite the two men being arrested on the same day, the cases are separate.

‘The Church of England, including the Diocese of Chichester, are cooperating fully with police,’ said Detective Chief Inspector Carwyn Hughes, of Sussex police, who is leading the investigation.

‘Although the matters referred to are still subject of police investigation, Sussex police make it clear that the force will always take seriously any allegations of historic sexual offending, and every possible step will be taken to investigate whenever appropriate.

‘Allegations of historic offences are treated just as seriously as any more recent offences.’

The arrest of Mr Ball, a former Bishop of Lewes who resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993, and a second retired clergyman comes after the CofE issued an ‘unreserved apology’ earlier this year for historic cases of child abuse by some of its clergy.